Literature Reviews

Reviewed research papers, articles, and publications relevant to digital accessibility.

• Application for the configuration and adaptation of the Android operating system for the visually impaired

  Bruna de Oliveira, Juliana Cristina Braga, Rafael J. Pezzuto Damaceno (2018) — Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2018)

  This short paper presents the design and preliminary evaluation of an Android application that allows people with visual impairments (PVI) to configure their device’s accessibility settings using voice commands, bypassing the paradoxical problem that…

  • Android
  • visual impairment
  • blind
  • low vision
  • TalkBack
  • voice commands
  • mobile accessibility
  • accessibility settings
  • screen reader
  • Brazil

• Parallel DOM Architecture for Accessible Interactive Simulations

  Taliesin L. Smith, Jesse Greenberg, Sam Reid, Emily B. Moore (2018) — Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2018)

  This paper presents the Parallel DOM (PDOM) architecture developed by the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder to make their suite of 140+ free science and mathematics simulations accessible to students with visu…

  • web accessibility
  • interactive simulations
  • screen readers
  • keyboard accessibility
  • WAI-ARIA
  • STEM accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • PhET
  • DOM
  • scene graph
  • alternative input

• Demo: Expanding Blocks4All with Variables and Functions

  Jacqueline Shao Yi Ong, Nana Adwoa O. Amoah, Alison E. Garrett-Engele, Mariella Irene Page, Katherine R. McCarthy, Lauren R. Milne (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This demonstration paper describes extensions to Blocks4All, an accessible blocks-based programming environment (BBPE) for iPad designed to enable children with visual impairments to learn programming through touchscreen interaction with screen reade…

  • programming education
  • blind
  • low vision
  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • VoiceOver
  • STEM accessibility
  • blocks-based programming
  • motor impairment
  • color blindness
  • robotics
  • Switch Control

• Automatic Generation and Evaluation of Usable and Secure Audio reCAPTCHA

  Mohit Jain, Rohun Tripathi, Ishita Bhansali, Pratyush Kumar (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This paper presents reCAPGen, a system that automatically generates usable and secure audio CAPTCHAs by leveraging the gap between human and machine speech recognition abilities. Visual CAPTCHAs — the dominant form of online human verification — are …

  • CAPTCHA
  • audio accessibility
  • blind
  • visual impairment
  • web accessibility
  • speech recognition
  • security
  • crowdsourcing
  • screen readers

• Reading Between the Guidelines: How Commercial Voice Assistant Guidelines Hinder Accessibility for Blind Users

  Stacy M. Branham, Antony Rishin Mukkath Roy (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This paper presents a qualitative document review of public-facing voice assistant design guidelines published by five leading commercial vendors — Amazon (Alexa), Google (Google Assistant), Microsoft (Cortana), Apple (Siri), and Alibaba (Xiao AI) — …

  • voice assistant
  • blind
  • visual impairment
  • conversational user interfaces
  • design guidelines
  • Alexa
  • Siri
  • Google Assistant
  • screen readers
  • accessibility barriers

• μGraph: Haptic Exploration and Editing of 3D Chemical Diagrams

  Cristian Bernareggi, Dragan Ahmetovic, Sergio Mascetti (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This paper presents μGraph (Multimodal Graph), a system that combines haptic force feedback and speech to enable people who are blind or visually impaired (VIB) to explore and edit three-dimensional structural chemical formulae. Chemical diagrams rep…

  • haptic technology
  • STEM accessibility
  • blind
  • visual impairment
  • chemistry education
  • force feedback
  • 3D interaction
  • graph accessibility
  • multimodal interaction

• Non-Visual Beats: Redesigning the Groove Pizza

  William Payne, Alex Xu, Amy Hurst, S. Alex Ruthmann (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This demonstration paper describes the accessible redesign of the Groove Pizza, a popular free web-based drum step-sequencer developed by NYU’s Music Experience Design Lab (MusEDLab) that reaches thousands of users per month. The original Groove Pizz…

  • music accessibility
  • blind
  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • sonification
  • keyboard accessibility
  • music creation
  • web accessibility
  • universal design

• GoDonnie: A Robot Programming Language to Improve Orientation and Mobility Skills in People Who are Visually Impaired

  Juliana Damasio Oliveira, Márcia de Borba Campos, Alexandre Amory, Rafael H. Bordini (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This demonstration paper presents GoDonnie, a text-based programming language designed to help people who are visually impaired (PVI) develop both computational thinking and orientation and mobility (O&M) skills simultaneously. GoDonnie is based on L…

  • orientation and mobility
  • visual impairment
  • programming education
  • robotics
  • screen readers
  • STEM accessibility
  • spatial cognition
  • computational thinking
  • blind

• A Demonstration of Molder: An Accessible Design Tool for Tactile Maps

  Lei Shi, Yuhang Zhao, Elizabeth Kupferstein, Shiri Azenkot (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This demonstration paper presents Molder, an accessible design tool that enables teachers of the visually impaired (TVIs) and orientation and mobility (O&M) specialists to create 3D printed tactile maps without requiring professional 3D modeling skil…

  • tactile maps
  • tactile graphics
  • 3D printing
  • visual impairment
  • orientation and mobility
  • tangible interaction
  • design tools
  • accessible authoring
  • braille

• Research to Market Transition of Mobile Assistive Technologies for People with Visual Impairments

  Sergio Mascetti, Dragan Ahmetovic, Cristian Bernareggi (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This paper examines why so few mobile assistive technology research prototypes for people with visual impairments ever reach end users, and shares practical lessons from the authors’ experience developing and distributing three iOS apps through Every…

  • assistive technology
  • visual impairment
  • mobile accessibility
  • technology transfer
  • blind
  • low vision
  • app development
  • braille
  • orientation and mobility
  • STEM accessibility